Minimum system specs?

[Jon_Valjean]

Hey guys :)

Firstly, excellent site - heaps of info. I've been reading the FAQ's and forums like mad, but I can't seem to find information regarding my particular problem, so apologies if it's been covered before.

I'm an absolute n00b to this whole scene, but I decided to give DVD to DivX ripping a go - I chose Titanic (just to make it hard for myself lol) from the local store and ripped to it HDD using decrypter without any problems. This is a region 4 PAL 25fps DVD. I've been playing with the first 25MB VOB file (just the opening credits) trying to get it to encode in Flask without being jumpy - it seems no matter what bitrate (I've tried 300kbit, 900kbit, 1000kbit, 1300kbit and 1700kbit) it skips in media player. I'm encoding at various resolutions around the 580x350 mark, and have tried DivX 3.11 Low Motion and DivX 4 as well. I've tried deinterlacing, altering the sharpness and removing the audio track - nothing works, every couple of seconds, or when there's a lot of action on the screen it skips. The slider bar for CPU in the DivX control panel of Media Player is hard to the left.

I suspect the problem is my system specs, but I'm really just after affimation from the more learned of you out there - I have an AMD K6-2 500Mhz with 256MB SDRAM, a GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR AGP card with TV-out and I'm running Win98SE (two day old install). I can play virtually any DivX out there (I have over 70) including an amazing rip of Moulin Rouge that takes up two CD's and quality-wise is almost identical to DVD. When streaming Moulin Rouge across my network, I've seen spikes up to 3000kbit during scene changes, but my system doesn't skip at all. It's encoded in 640x288. I also sent a copy of my attempt to a friend who tried playing it with a P3 733 @ 850Mhz with 512MB RAM and he said it didn't skip very much, but the quality was poor compared with other (smaller) DivX's he had, and looked awful next to the same copy of Moulin Rouge.


I've also noticed that when encoding with Flask, the line graph showing progress down the bottom often has spikes dropping the bitrate down as low as 50, then back up to 1000ish when encoding - and not even during scene changes or heavy action. Could this be causing the problem? Another thing, when I play the finished AVI back (two CD's worth, ended up being 1.47GIG lol) it played it back at 19 fps or so, as opposed to the 25 I specified when ripping it. I've never had a problem with sound however - it was out of sync, but VirtualDub fixed that up good :)

Finally, do you think it's worth trying again with GK or should I just bin the system and buy something faster? It takes 26 hours to rip the movie (190 minutes)

Any thoughts much appreciated! And once again, apologies if this has come up before but I honestly had a good search! :)

[manono]

Hi Jon-

A couple of things come to mind. If you're serious about ripping then, yes, you should have a faster system, and your current system may even be borderline for playing back high res-high bit rate movies.

When you said 580x350 did you mean that literally? Because that's an unacceptable resolution for both AR and width-height reasons. Even if you don't go with GKnot for the whole process, you might want to use it for a proper AR-crop-resolution.

You are 25fps PAL, right? So how did you wind up with a 19.xxxfps .avi? That would explain the jumpiness. I suspect that somewhere along the line you either used Force Film in DVD2AVI or IVTC'd. That's right-you said you used Flask. I haven't used it in a long time, so I'm not sure, but you did something to change the fps. You might want to deinterlace or use something like Decomb to reconstruct the progressive frames (using different methods), but you don't want to cut the fps.

Flask might be good for getting your feet wet with a couple of movies, but if you're serious about this you'll be switching soon to a better method, such as using GKnot as a front end for Nandub rips. Then you too will be making movies of the quality you saw with your Moulin Rouge download.

You said you've read the FAQs and Forums, but have you read the excellent guides here? Anyway, welcome to the board and Good Luck.

[Jon_Valjean]

Hi Manono - thx for replying :)

I didn't mean the resolution literally - I just wasn't in front of my machine to remember the exact numbers that were divisible by 16 lol.. but that was around the resolution I was aiming for. It's interesting with the framerate - when I set it up in flask, it did detect the correct 25fps framerate, and I selected the correct box for 25fps, but after the encoding WMP played it at 19.x fps and seemed to be dropping frames all over the show.
I guess you've answered my question - I have had slight problems playing one or two DivX movies, but strangely enough they were of less quality than the Moulin Rouge I have, so I can only assume they were made using Flask or the encoder had similar problems to what I'm experiencing. I didn't want to rush out and spend US$600 on a new Athlon mainboard, processor and RAM if I can persist with this machine and have some hope of encoding smooth rips that are playable on the same machine I create them with.

Ok, back to the drawing board, and download GK :) I've read the guides for this program and while they are undoubtably very concise and well presented, there are still a lot of abbreviations I don't understand.. but then this isn't something you can perfect overnight, so I'll have to read a lot more :)

Thx! :cool:

[dragoman]

Hi,

You should be fine encoding movies with that machine. It won't be very fast however.....

Flask is a good program to learn the basics, but my friend is right, Gknot is the way to go.

It provides an easy way to utilize the best tool for divx out there, Nandub, and the guides on this site make encoding a movie easy.

I also agree that the source of your jumpiness was the framerate. I bet you checked IVTC, right? That would drop the fps down....

Welcome to encoding, and to the board.

dragoman

[Jon_Valjean]

Hey thx dragoman - I've just had a go at Gknot - just as a first try, I've encoded the opening shorts as I did with Flask, and it doesn't skip!! Ok, there's no sound, and the 55 second clip is 12MB, but I'm still stoked! It's looking really encouraging.

Thanks for all your help people :)

[manono]

Way to go Jon. Off to a flying start. I'm sorry about my first post. I didn't mean to imply that your current machine couldn't encode well, or would somehow screw up the movies. What I meant about getting a faster comp was that when you're excited about something, and experimenting and learning, that it's such a drag to have to wait 24 hours to see how it turned out. And when you make a mistake or screw up a setting, as you certainly will at some point, and then you have to do it all over again....